The Musicality of Non-Musicians: An Index for Assessing Musical Sophistication in the General Population

Abstract

Musical skills and expertise vary greatly in Western societies. Individuals can differ in their repertoire of musical behaviours as well as in the level of skill they display for any single musical behaviour. The types of musical behaviours we refer to here are broad, ranging from performance on an instrument and listening expertise, to the ability to employ music in functional settings or to communicate about music. In this paper, we first describe the concept of ‘musical sophistication’ which can be used to describe the multi-faceted nature of musical expertise. Next, we develop a novel measurement instrument, the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) to assess self-reported musical skills and behaviours on multiple dimensions in the general population using a large Internet sample (n = 147,636). Thirdly, we report results from several lab studies, demonstrating that the Gold-MSI possesses good psychometric properties, and that self-reported musical sophistication is associated with performance on two listening tasks. Finally, we identify occupation, occupational status, age, gender, and wealth as the main socio-demographic factors associated with musical sophistication. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical accounts of implicit and statistical music learning and with regard to social conditions of sophisticated musical engagement.

Tuning the mind: Exploring the connections between musical ability and executive functions

“…In addition, our processing tasks measured only melodic and rhythmic discrimination and did not assess musical production, sensitivity to timbre, or any number of other aspects of musical ability. These limitations were necessary given time constraints, however the development of more comprehensive measures of musical ability (e.g., Law & Zentner, 2012;Müllensiefen, Gingras, Musil, & Stewart, 2014) will be of great benefit to future work on the relationships between musical and non-musical abilities.…”

A causal involvement of the left supramarginal gyrus during the retention of musical pitches

“…To evaluate musical training, the Musical Training Dimension from the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI, MŸllensiefen et al, 2014) was used. This Gold MSI dimension is comprised of 7 items that assess an individualÕs musical training and practice habits.…”

Personality Correlates for Digital Concert Program Notes

“…The text will be curated by musicologists and we will use different levels of complexity (in terms of vocabulary). Furthermore, we will use the Goldsmiths Music Sophistication Index (MSI) [12] to assess the musical background of the users (the MSI instrument was published after we already carried out the study presented here).…”